Chapter 19
Dominik
My hand is still covering Alina’s when my phone buzzes minutes later.
I don’t move. I let her hand stay there for one heartbeat more than necessary. “Answer it,” she whispers.
I pick up the phone in my free hand. “Yes?”
“Positions are set,” Petrov says calmy. “Two bikes are out front, one rider sleeping, one smoking. Sedan across the street exactly as described. Renat’s on the north corner.
He counts two rifles in a high window, not one.
Sergei has eyes on the bay where a van’s backed in.
We’ll text that door code when we have to. ”
“Any neighbors?” I ask.
“Yes, but we’ll keep them inside if we move.”
“Don’t move until I say,” I remind him.
“Copy,” Petrov replies. “Also, the drunk in the sedan is not drunk. He’s reading a magazine upside down.”
“Take him out first if we move. I don’t want him getting away or calling for backup we can’t hear.”
“Understood.”
“We do not let any of our men die in Jersey tonight,” I warn him.
“Yes, boss,” Petrov says in agreement.
I end the call and glance at Alina. She’s watching my mouth like she’s memorizing every word that comes out of it.
“Now we wait?” she guesses.
“Now we wait.”
I stand, slowly, and my body reminds me why again. I move anyway. At the bar, I pour a glass of vodka and drain half of it before setting it down.
When I return to the desk, Alina steps into my space and fixes my collar because apparently, we both prefer to be as close to each other as possible. She does it so naturally, like she’s done it a thousand times. Like she plans to keep doing it. “What can I do?” she asks.
“Stay close,” I reply honestly. “Eat when I tell you to. Avoid my brother at all costs.”
Her eyes soften. “You’re upset that I stood up to him.”
I force down the rising panic from thinking about the chain reaction of events she may have unintentionally set off by trying to protect me. “No, I’m not upset. I’m impressed. Maybe even a little jealous.”
“And worried,” she adds, seeing it no matter how deep I try to hide it from her.
“Also worried,” I say. “Gavriil doesn’t easily concede.” He was raised to win, even at the cost of me. “He won’t forgive or forget anything either.”
She nods once, like she’s committing that detail to memory. “What about you?”
“Forgiveness is not a part of this life,” I say. “But gratitude is.”
The line of her mouth goes soft. “Gratitude?”
“For the coffee. For the way you said no to a man no one refuses for me,” I say. “For closing the bullet wound that day with your hands. For changing a bloody bandage without making it feel like pity. I don’t think anyone has touched me without an agenda in years.”
Alina looks at me like she doesn’t know what to do with my honesty. Then she puts her palm over my sternum again, just for a heartbeat, and says, “Thank you for keeping me safe.”
Her touch steadies something in me that I didn’t know was shaking.
I catch her wrist again before she can pull away. Not hard, just enough to keep her there.
“I’ll never let him take you,” I assure her.
“I know you would never hand me over to him,” she replies.
Our words almost sound the same, but we’re saying two completely different things.
We don’t move for a long second that stretches. Alina’s eyes are on me, her breath held. She’s too close to this and exactly where I want her. I should put distance back between us.
“Sit,” I tell her, and my voice is softer than it should be. “Eat something else.”
“I’m not hungry,” she says.
“Eat anyway,” I say.
“I could bring you something?” she offers.
“No, I’ll join you.”
I follow her to the kitchen, watching as she makes toast. Seeing her do ordinary things in my kitchen is an intimacy I didn’t expect to like so much.
I keep my eyes on the door and her, reminding myself we’re short on men, and my brother could use the moment to cause problems.
The city changes color outside the windows while Alina flutters around grabbing this and that. I could happily watch her do nothing all day. She’s calm and peace personified, and I’ve never had much of either in my life.
She slides a plate onto the table in front of me, toast, butter, an apple, and takes the chair to my left. Her knee finds the side of my chair. She doesn’t move it away. Neither do I.
“You’re worried,” she says, not as a taunt, just stating a fact.
“I don’t like waiting for updates. Waiting means I can imagine every way this could all go wrong.”
“You think they might miss something?” she asks.
“No, I trained them to act like me and miss nothing,” I say.
She looks down at my chest. Glances away. “I don’t… I don’t know how to do this waiting,” she says, and the honesty of it lands heavy. “Not being able to help.”
“You helped,” I say. “You got Archer to give me intel I didn’t have.”
“I lied to my brother,” she says.
“Your lie got him to call back which helped me.” I look at her mouth and then away. “It’s a shame his call came later than it should have for you, and that hurts me.” I’d burn down every mile between them if it meant I never heard disappointment in her voice again.
I prefer Alina being angry at me to her being let down by her own damn brother any day of the week. At least if I’ve done something to upset her, I can figure out a way to fix it. She’s too good, too sweet to endure any pain from her own blood.
Alina goes very still at my response that gave away more than I intended. “Why?” she asks me quietly. “Why does it hurt you?”
“Because I don’t like watching someone you love and trust making you suffer,” I say simply. I want to be the man who protects her, keeps her safe, even if that’s feeling like an impossible feat.
Her breath catches. “Now you know why I couldn’t let Gavriil wake you.”
I wouldn’t have thought Archer and Gavriil have a single thing in common, but maybe there’s another reason why I feel like I’ve reached my limit with my brother’s high-handed demands.
My whole life he’s treated me with tough love to make me stronger, when all it’s done is made me resent him.
Gavriil should be my brother, first and foremost, not the Pakhan giving me orders like any other soldier and expecting blind obedience.
Especially when those orders directly affect Alina.
“My mom always dated men who would hurt her,” she says softly, eyes fixed on some point I can’t see.
“Archer and I would beg her to leave because it hurt us to see them abuse her, but she stayed. Every time. She called it loyalty, but Archer called it a slow suicide.” She swallows hard.
“The last man proved him right. And I promised myself I’d never mistake cruelty for strength or love again. ”
“I’m sorry you grew up around men like that,” I tell her sincerely. “And I’m sorry no one showed your mom that she deserved better.”
A flicker of something twists in my chest, anger for the girl she was, and a darker promise for the woman sitting in front of me. No one will ever touch her like that.
The phone on the table buzzes again, interrupting our quiet, introspective moment.
Viktor.
As soon as I answer the call, he doesn’t waste a second. “Plate on the van is four nine three-LZP. It’s registered to a company that doesn’t exist other than a mailbox in Secaucus.”
“Keep the plate. I’ll send a picture to the part of the police department that owes us for their kid’s scholarship.”
“Copy. Also,” Viktor says, “Renat thinks he saw Popeye himself, just for a second, on the catwalk.”
“Then he must be getting nervous,” I say.
“He’s expecting us,” Viktor says.
“That fear will hopefully cause him to make a mistake.”
I end the call and rub the bridge of my nose with my fingers. Pain twinges but I breathe around it. Alina reaches as if to touch my hand but doesn’t.
“You should go lie down,” she says quietly.
“I should,” I say. “But then I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye out for Gavriil.”
A small dangerous light flickers in her eyes at the mention of him returning, one that I can’t decipher.
Is she scared of Gavriil, or does she want to see him again? I worry she may have liked standing up to him so much that she wants to try it again.
And the next time could be her last.
I stand up and the room tilts for a heartbeat at the thought. I slap a palm down on the table demanding that my body cooperate with me. My father used to say that pain is a reminder that you’re still failing. I hear him every single time I move.
Alina rises with me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lie. “I just can’t sit still another second.”
I cross to the window and look out over the city my brother’s been ruling over for a decade.
Across that water, I pray that my men are thinking clearly. I hope they’ll forgive me for sending them with orders that don’t touch me, just like my brother would do.
Behind me I hear Alina stand and step up next to me. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t have to. We’re both tense. The air feels charged, like a storm is crawling underneath the skin.
My phone vibrates again. My pulse jumps either in relief or dread. I can’t tell the difference anymore.
It’s Petrov.
“There’s movement,” he whispers as if he’s being overcautious which I prefer.
“The front door opened. That drunk in the sedan put his magazine down. The two men on the bikes woke up. A pallet was wheeled over to the bay, but they stopped before the door like they’re testing it or getting ready to load up. ”
“Then get everyone ready.”
“On it,” Petrov agrees, and it’s followed with a pause. “Boss?”
“Mm?”
“We’ve got this,” he says confidently. “You’re not missing anything.”
“I’m missing a fight, missing standing beside you,” I say.
“I know. But we wouldn’t have let you come even if you had tried. Doctor’s orders,” he replies making me almost grin because he’s so full of shit. None of them would have stopped me. They would’ve looked at me like I was being an idiot, but they wouldn’t have said a word.
I end the call and press the cool glass to my forehead for a second, an indulgence I don’t deserve, just like Alina.
“What if he…what if Archer betrayed you again?” Alina asks.
“He’s not that stupid,” I assure her. Then, to take her mind off such things, I ask her, “Are you tired? You still look exhausted. Why don’t you go try and rest, at least for a few hours?”
“While they’re out there risking their lives on my brother’s word?” she asks, half laughing, half broken. “I’m staying here.”
“Gavriil will likely make an appearance to demand an update,” I say just to confirm the light in her eyes I saw earlier. It wasn’t my imagination, and I’m not sure what to do with that information. “I’d rather he didn’t see you when he’s here.”
“I’m not leaving your side,” she reiterates, her jaw clenched stubbornly. I knew she wouldn’t hide again like before, and it’s wrong of me to ask her to do so, even if it’s how I can keep her safe. Out of sight, out of his mind.
As if it’s that simple.
I should push her away. Instead, I step closer to her.
“Fine.” I concede because I also, selfishly, like having her close.
I turn my head. We’re too close for comfort and not close enough for anything else.
“If Gavriil shows up, I want you to stand behind me, try to keep quiet, and let me handle him. He won’t like being reminded of what I promised when I claimed you were under my protection. ”
This apartment isn’t big enough to hold what happens if my brother and I stop pretending we’re on the same side.
“What was your promise?” she asks.
“That his position as Pakhan, as my brother, won’t stop me from taking his hand if he tries to touch you,” I say.
Her breath leaves in a small sound as she looks at me. I take this moment, that sound, into my chest and lock it away.
My phone vibrates again.
“Everyone is in place, boss,” Viktor says into the line when I answer.
“Then go when you think it’s time,” I tell him.